But who's Andrea?
Andrea Grasso is an Italian fan and collector, whose lifelong passion for Elton John has made him one of the foremost experts on the artist’s discography and related items. Born and raised in Italy, Grasso knew who Elton John was in 1988, started listening to his music in 1992 and after a few months began collecting his records, building for over 30 years one of the most extensive and carefully curated private collections in the world. Over the years, he has specialized in researching and cataloguing the physical and artistic dimensions of Elton John’s career — from CDs to vinyl records (album, singles and other releases from all over the world, including a complete collection of collaborations between Elton and other artists), from press materials to books, tourbooks and rare promotional items. In 2023, he was featured in Record Collector Presents, a special one-off issue dedicated to Sir Elton John, highlighting his extensive collections and expertise.
Maybe it was because after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road they just reached their peak of popularity, so it only seemed fair to go back to their historical roots and revisit them. After the release of GYBR they had to record Caribou in a rush, since Elton was very busy touring, but after that (maybe because that album, while successful, was inferior to the previous one and they knew it) they thought about doing for the next one something special, they wanted to do another masterpiece and at the same time they wanted to celebrate their short but very successful career, where they were among the most important artists of the music world.
How do you see Captain Fantastic positioned within rock history and within Elton’s career?
Within Elton’s career is without doubt one of his best albums, but I’m not sure about rock history…I think it’s not a very well-known album, it’s not the kind of album that even non-fans know (like instead GYBR is), maybe because there is not a real hit single from it. Someone Saved My Life Tonight is a masterpiece, but not a “hit” in the strict sense, so while the album sold very well at the time, it doesn’t have a real “position” in rock history.
Are there any songs on the album that, in live performances, have changed significantly in meaning, energy, or the way they connect with the audience?
I am the kind of fan who always prefers the studio
versions to the live renditions, and this is valid also for other artists I
follow, so maybe this is not the right question for me…
Having said so, I think that it’s very difficult to reproduce live the beautiful Beachboysesque backing vocals of Someone Saved, no matter how good the band is.
How do you see the evolution of Bernie’s lyrics on Captain Fantastic compared to his earlier albums, considering he had already released several successful albums and had a more professional and less naïve perspective?
Bernie’s early lyrics were very strange (“esoteric”
they called them), and also not always very clear, the listener sometimes had
to think hard to understand their meaning.
In the Captain Fantastic album the lyrics are more clear, since they refer to a story that we know very well. But despite that, there are still in this album some of them that I don’t fully understand, for example Better Off Dead. But apart from a few exception, they are clearer because they are telling facts that we know, so generally we can understand their meaning better than in previous albums.
Maybe Better Off Dead, it’s an innovative track for Elton’s own catalogue, its rhythm and syncopation was at the time something new and unexpected from Elton.
Comparing Captain Fantastic from 1975 with The Captain and the Kid from 2006, how would you assess the difference in commercial success and impact? Do you think trying to condense so many years of experience into a single album affected the coherence and freshness of the project, compared to the more direct and focused approach of the first one?
First of all I have to say that of course I love Captain Fantastic but I also love The Captain and the Kid, it's one of my favourite among the recent Elton albums.
But it’s a pity that such a great idea was kind of lost in the market because of poor promotion; in 2006 I was already a huge fan and collector of Elton’s music, and I could “live” that album and its related promotion in full, so I think I can say for certain that the promotion was not well done, it seemed like the record company was treating it as “just another Elton John album” (or maybe “another album by one of our artists that we are forced to release”), without underlining the comparison with its 1975 companion.
So, I perfectly know that TC&TK could never have had the same success as CFATBDC, but I think that it deserved something more.
Also, when TC&TK was announced, I tried to guess what could have been the themes of the songs, and I’m delighted to say that I guessed right some of them, like the one about the drugs (And The House Fell Down) and about his many lovers (I Must Have Lost It On The Wind). Others like The Bridge and Richard Nixon were impossible to guess! And during this little game I realized that between 1975 and 2005 too many things happened in Elton and Bernie’s lives, and of course an album was not enough to tell everything, so it was obvious that a selection had to be done! But having said so, maybe they could have avoided more generic lyrics like The Bridge (that I like anyway) and replaced them with lyrics about a few more specific facts or anecdotes occurred during their lives/careers. For this reason I can certainly say that the first one has a more direct and focused approach, but musically I love them both anyway.
OK! How do you think Captain Fantastic was received in Italy, and what cultural and musical impact did it have at the time, in your expert opinion?
Since I wasn’t even born in 1975, I’m not really able to answer to this! As much as I love Elton, I always “studied” him mainly in the context of his native country, UK; about Italy, so far I never deepened the impact he had in the 1970s, because it’s difficult to find stuff about those years and maybe I also don’t care enough to search for it, because most of the time Italian fans were very lukewarm towards Elton if compared to UK or USA fans! So what I can tell you about sales in Italy is that Captain Fantastic was #42 in the 1975 end of the year chart, that its peak in the regular weekly chart was #12 and it stayed in the weekly charts for 23 weeks. So all in all not a bad result, but neither excellent…
Are there any curiosities, stories, or small details about the album that only a collector or expert like you might notice, which usually go unnoticed by fans?
Maybe the name on the cheque in the Meal Ticket page: ”R.K.Dwight”! Or Davey playing the piano in Writing…
Actually the scrapbook in the original LP is choc-full of curiosities, if one is careful enough to read everything, even the very small handwritten lines! But maybe, thanks to the reissues without it, not everyone own the scrapbook!
I was really surprised to see that there are “new”
demos as bonus tracks (“new” as they were never officially released before, but
also they were not circulating in the bootleg/collectors circuit), and I was
really excited to hear the demo of the title-track in advance because it has
several differences from the finished version. It’s still a mystery to me why
they could only find 6 demos and not the rest (or maybe they have them all but
decided to release only some of them), but it’s a nice surprise anyway.
I’m also kind of disappointed that they didn’t release
a Blu-ray with the footage of the 2005 concert (the one that is being released
just as audio); they obviously have it in full, since they are releasing some tracks
in the official Youtube, and also I know there will be an official
video-premiere of the whole show, so I really don’t understand why they didn’t
want to release it officially in a physical format along with the rest of the
stuff…
Finally, I’m surprised about the Blu-ray Atmos version of the album released through SDE. I have already the 2004 SACD version in 5.1, and since I don’t have an Atmos system, this 5.1 mix would be enough for me. But I think the Blu-ray version will sound better even in 5.1, and anyway I’m glad that the surround format is rising again (also recently Madman, Diamonds and Angels were released as surround BRs); my hope is that soon we will also see in surround albums that so far were never released as such, like Don’t Shoot Me, Caribou and Blue Moves…and all the others!
Mine too! Do you think an album like Captain Fantastic, with a thematic and autobiographical concept, would be successful today, in a context where songs are mostly released individually and full concept albums are rarely made?
I actually don’t know the answer, because the musical audience today is very different from the 1975 one, and since a couple of decades I really can’t understand the logic behind it, and why bad music is successful and good music is not. So I have to just give up!
In the end, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy remains a rare moment of honesty and ambition perfectly intertwined — the sound of two young artists daring to tell their own story. Through Andrea’s thoughtful reflections, we’re reminded how alive the album still feels fifty years later, full of details, mysteries, and emotion that continue to fascinate listeners.
Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and for joining the Week Of... Captain Fantastic 50th Anniversary. Your knowledge, enthusiasm, and love for Elton’s music made this conversation a real joy.
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